Your Wild West

Posted By BGRoberts on February 21, 2010

Water…. something we take for granted.  But to the herds heading north, it was the most precious of things.  It literally meant life or death.  In this chapter of “The Log of A Cowboy”, we see just how imperitive it was.

The Log of a Cowboy – chapter 5 “A Dry Drive”

Our cattle quieted down nicely after this run, and the next few weeks
brought not an incident worth recording. There was no regular trail
through the lower counties, so we simply kept to the open country.
Spring had advanced until the prairies were swarded with grass and
flowers, while water, though scarcer, was to be had at least once
daily. We passed to the west of San Antonio–an outfitting point which
all herds touched in passing northward–and Flood and our cook took
the wagon and went in for supplies. But the outfit with the herd kept
on, now launched on a broad, well-defined trail, in places
seventy-five yards wide, where all local trails blent into the one
common pathway, known in those days as the Old Western Trail. It is
not in the province of this narrative to deal with the cause or origin
of this cattle trail, though it marked the passage of many hundred
thousand cattle which preceded our Circle Dots, and was destined to
afford an outlet to several millions more to follow. The trail proper
consisted of many scores of irregular cow paths, united into one broad
passageway, narrowing and widening as conditions permitted, yet ever
leading northward. After a few years of continued use, it became as
well defined as the course of a river.

Several herds which had started farther up country were ahead of ours,
and this we considered an advantage, for wherever one herd could go,
it was reasonable that others could follow. Flood knew the trail as
well as any of the other foremen, but there was one thing he had not

taken into consideration: the drouth of the preceding summer…[CONTINUE READING]

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